GC macquarie - reviews

Lightning flashes. Another child disappears...
Zorka Circus’s big top roars with laughter and cheers, but when it moves on, children vanish.
Circus Security Chief Rurik suspects a killer hides among the performers, but they close ranks—they’ve always viewed lightning-scarred Rurik as the monster. He must find the culprit before anyone else disappears and his home is destroyed by the murders.
Into Zorka Circus comes the Skomori clan, despised as gravedigging ghouls. A one-day truce allows bloodwalker Sylvie to marry. Instead, she finds a body. Alerting others will defy her clan’s strict code, break the truce, and leave her an outcast.
When more bodies turn up, the killer's trail becomes impossible to ignore. Rurik and Sylvie must follow the clues—even if they lead to something unimaginable…

At seventeen, Lain Fisher has already aced the Institute’s elite training program for Mindwalkers, therapists who use a direct neural link to erase a patient’s traumatic memories. A prodigy and the daughter of a renowned scientist—whose unexplained death left her alone in the world—Lain is driven by the need to save others.
When Steven, a troubled classmate, asks her to wipe a horrific childhood experience from his mind, Lain’s superiors warn her to stay away. Steven’s scars are too deep, they say; the risk too great. Yet the more time Lain spends with him, the more she begins to question everything about her society. As she defies the warnings and explores Steven’s memories, it becomes clear that he’s connected to something much bigger . . . something the Institute doesn’t want the world to discover.
Lain never expected to be a rule breaker. She certainly didn’t plan on falling in love with a boy she’s been forbidden to help. But then, she never expected to stumble into a conspiracy that could ignite a revolution.

A dark family secret is about to unleash itself. An old gypsy curse was cast long ago and is about to rear its ugly head when Faith Bennett, a descendant from the D’Amici family, learns she is to give birth to the seventh daughter in the family. Faith’s child will be born with a heightened sixth sense and regarded as the ‘enlightened one’. A vengeful tribe of the Romani Cult has been waiting hundreds of years for this event. Diabolical plans have been made that include kidnapping the child and an attempted murder. Danger lies at every turn as this young mother-to-be finds herself holding the key to a power she never knew lay deep within her. Unseen forces take root as she embarks on a perilous journey of deceit and entrapment when an unknown enemy emerges while trying to save her marriage, her life and that of her child. Faith will be forced to perform a dangerous ritual on sacred grounds. This Paranormal tale will take you from the small town of Pacentro, Italy, hidden deep in the Apennine Mountains in the early 1900s to modern day, Orange County, California, with its racy lifestyle. In this tale of betrayal and sacrifice, curses know no boundaries.

Would you rather suffer for eternity, or die peacefully?What if you had no choice?
The morning after witnessing a spectacular meteorite shower, Cory Shembo and his girlfriend Lana didn’t expect to wake up immortal.
News bulletins claim the meteorites have released a chemical compound called ATHENS which has caused mutations in the human race. The twisted outcome has left people unable to die but with an increased sensitivity to pain.
Now with the majority of food supplies contaminated, and the rich controlling what little is left, the desperate young couple are force to go on merciless food raids just to stave off the pain.
During which they accidentally discover a secret government device and find themselves caught up in a diabolical plot to control the future of humanity.
Realizing that there is more to ATHENS than what they were led to believe; Cory and Lana set out on a crusade to uncover the truth. Their journey will lead them into the darkest depths of humanity. If they can follow the trail, they may be able to find some answers. But will the cost of knowing the truth be too much?

Post apocalyptic novels seem to be few and far between these days, so it's always refreshing to come across an original story line. The Sabbath is a new take on the genre and quite enjoyable. This novel has so much promise and in fact, had me absolutely captivated from the very first chapter.

The story is centered around three survivors of a meteorite shower who, like the rest of the human race, have experienced immortality as a side effect from the disaster. Not only are they immortal, but pain is heightened in this new reality. We learn that the characters have lost their last days in a kind of amnesia scenario, and this is when the novel really starts to pick up.

It isn't long before we realise there is much more to this story than the meteorite shower from the opening pages, and the introduction of a new character throws our main three right into the hand of the truth, whether they like it or not.

The introduction of the government involvement, and the new found knowledge about ATHENS, the chemical compound that has rendered the human race immortal, there is quite a bit of world building that happens. Contaminated food and undrinkable water become the crux for desperation and an escape from the pain.

Although I enjoyed the interesting twist in the plot, there was just something missing. The characters need a little more refining for me to pine after them. Like I said, there was enough detail in the words to draw the reader in and make the food and water deprivation understandably devastating, however I would have liked more from the characters themselves. Perhaps I'm just a sucker for a character I can fall in love with, however I do believe these protagonists do have something them that we can grow to love.

As most modern post apocalyptic novels, this is only the first installment, and I'm looking forward to the next. This story has a hell of a lot of promise and is a great start to my 2016 reads.

As second son of the King of Levathia, seventeen-year-old Valerian desires the quiet life of a scholarly monk. But when he fails to save his older brother in battle, Valerian must instead become crown prince. While a traitorous knight schemes against him, Valerian meets Mercy, a pacifist Healer with whom he can speak mind-to-mind like the great dragons. Their bond emboldens Valerian to seek out the legendary dragons and ask for their help against the monsters who killed his brother. Can Valerian survive the traitor's assassins long enough to find the dragons? And if he does, can he convince them to lay aside their hatred of humans and help him save the land from destruction?